Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
THE PRINCE of Day Begone: The Struggle In the Caves of Darkness , written by Winston Cohen, is a good example of a decent idea taken too far and very poorly executed.
The concept of the 234-page book (excluding glossary of Jamaican terms) is sound enough. The mysterious Lizard, whose 'man juice' concoction is the pride and joy of downtown Kingston, Jamaica, and many a man, is approached by a mysterious American. The sequence of events leads to confrontations with the police, the onslaught of the Americans on Jamaica and Lizard and his spaceship in the Cockpit country, in a maronnage-meets-science-fiction tale where telepathy is the order of the day and animal/human communication almost the norm.
Not bad at all, in theory, but it is always the practical that gets you and it gets The Prince of Day Begone: The Struggle In the Caves of Darkness really, really badly.
BUMPY RIDE
If a book is a vehicle, taking the reader on a journey, this one is driven by a learner who is desperately in love with commas and exclamation marks. A comma means something, a pause. Try pausing where indicated as opposed to where you should in "Be careful Inspector we have here an incredible, brilliant man, who is searching for his 'destiny.' Let us hope he finds it, before we meet him in conflict." An exclamation mark signifies a burst of excitement. Be excited over (with the appropriate pauses; the dots are not mine) "She loved her body ... except her feet! They had given her so much 'pain and heartache.' ... Large, for a woman .... she wore a regular size ten! Her ex-husband used to tease her about them ... when their love was new ... But after their marriage turned sour ... he called her "big foot mountain gal".
So in driving terms The Prince of Day Begone: The Struggle In the Caves of Darkness is constant process of slamming on the brakes and stomping on the gas. There lies the way to barfing into a paper bag.
Added to that is the 85 chapters the 234 pages are divided into (do the math, OK). So in addition to the fits and starts we are constantly turning corners, so reading this book is like going through the Junction road with a person who is always either stalling the car or trying to break the robot taxi driver's record.
ERRORS
Then there are the errors. The many errors. Like calling Half-Way Tree 'Half-Way-Tru' and Trafalgar Road 'Tafalgar Road'. Like making 'pathway' two syllables and 'dragonflies' two words. Like saying "church bells peeled", a reporter is always trying to "gleam" the truth, and a certain Inspector Burkitt "lied on the bed of sorrow and remorse".
And my near favourite: "Where is their conscious?" Lizard shouted in anger. "The gunship was armed with a nuclear missile."
There is a fine line between incredible and incredulous, between the fantastic and fantasy, and while we expect a story with a heavy science fiction component to take us into the land of the fantastic and incredible, ridiculous should be avoided at all costs. So protests across the Middle East in support of Lizard and his spaceship in the Cockpit country just does not wash with me. Nor does the recovery of a sunken galleon, the gold from which is proposed to put in a 10-point economic plan, first of which is "a cable car system from Papine in Kingston through Newcastle to the blue mountain peaks". (And that should have been 'Blue Mountain', by the way.)
So in the end good conquers evil, the U.S. forces have to return home to quell terrorism on their own soil and Lizard and Foster, who he reassures about her "big foot mountain gal" size 10s get married.
Me? I'm just damned dizzy.
